The present invention relates to fabricating implants to replace bony structures. More specifically, the invention relates to a system and methodology for fabricating a “drop in” (i.e., the prosthetic's fit is prefabricated taking into account all of the subject's anatomy surrounding the site where it will sit) quality replacement for a particular segment of missing bony structure, in which the implant fits precisely replacing the contours of the missing segment and thus minimizes length and complications during the surgical procedure to install the implant, and subsequently facilitates the healing process. Current standard of care is to mass produce a “shape” that matches the patient's anatomy in only few dimensions that are obtained by external measurements. Often parts of the patient's anatomy must be removed to get a good fit. Anything else is referred to as a “custom tooling” device by the FDA. This patent presents a method to prefabricate a custom (i.e., fits all dimensions of the defect site) prosthetic from imaging data. The implant requires only placement and minimal fixation by the attending clinician. It will be appreciated, however, that the invention is also amenable to other like applications.
Various systems and methods of fabricating prosthetic implants are known in the prior art. Examples of such prior systems and methods include U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,436,684; 5,274,565; 5,357,429; 5,554,190; 5,741,215; and 5,768,134. Each of these patents, however, suffer from many disadvantages that have collectively limited the usefulness of their methods and implants to the relevant field.
The primary disadvantage of these methods is that they do not provide a mechanism for ensuring that the implant will be a “drop in” replacement for the missing bony material. More specifically, the implant may not be the correct shape and/or size and, therefore, not properly fit the prosthetic into the patient. Without a proper fit, there can be a wide variety of complications with the implant, including complications that arise during the surgical process as well as during the healing process. Ultimately, these complications may result in the patient experiencing pain, disuse, atrophy, implant or surrounding structure mechanical failure, and/or the body rejecting the implant. Thus, it is a critical disadvantage of these prior art systems and methods that they do not provide the ability to ensure a custom fit, “drop in” replacement for the missing body segment.
The present invention provides a new and improved apparatus and method which overcomes the above-referenced problems and others.